Tag Archives: writing

I’ve been thinking a lot lately. That’s the kind of thing that happens while you sit at your desk, knitting until your fingers and wrists go numb, watching millions of images load ever so slowly on your dino-dial-ups for Pintrest. There’s been topics fluttering in my mind, words to mash out on this blank screen… but knitting doesn’t work well with typing. You loose your count and your train of thought all at one time. Trust me.

And it’s hard to work on this, when you need to work on that. Priorities wrestle with wants. Needs fling mud at desires. Options and choices wrestle in the jello pit that once was a functional brain. Everything fights you, time, budgets, noises, small people wanting things.

It’s like the first time I looked into selling handmade goods on Etsy, they say, “Choose one medium”. Choose one. Like that’s possible for me. I can knit, crochet, draw, paint, sew, quill, carve, stamp, shape… not that I have valuable skills in every form, but choosing one is like asking me if I want to keep my right or my left leg… um, all please?

I want to do it all, because what if I choose the wrong one? My hobby is hobbies. But I want one to be mine. Or at least three. Maybe four. My hard limit is at nine, honestly.

And somehow this all links back to writing. What if. I mean really, what if? What if while I’m busy training dogs (or not so busy, thank you economy), and knitting my fingers off to pay the bills, supporting my writer friends, promoting them, blogging about nothing, chasing kids, trying to make a garden/homestead on a rock bed, pretending I know how to sing for the fake band… What if, deep in my computer’s files, laying in wait, is the next big thing. And in my interview with Ellen (because Oprah erks me to no end) she asks how long it took me to write this book, that instantly sold out, and the movie rights were bought before it was even published… I have to say, twenty years. And I have to admit that for 19 of those years it was sitting there in my computer’s memory, because I was too friggen scared/hard on myself to even try. And she’s going to laugh and call me cute, while holding up one of my washcloths and make some cute joke about loving Jesus and drinking beer.

Okay so I doubt that’s how anything would unfold. But what if?

But where’s the time? And where the frick, is the confidence? Because all I know is that them washcloths will not make themselves. And sitting here, typing about what if’s does not pay the bills.

There’s some very good benefits to giving up on the whole “real writing” deal.

Like stats, I can finally give up on checking the dang stats every time I publish a new post here. Sure I still look, but it’s easier to shrug them off now. Also, it’s a tad bit easier to pull something out of nothing for NaBloPoMo, I’ve lost the worry over “What will Blogher want to see?” and “What will they feature, or better yet Syndicate?” And there’s the daunting, “Oh my gawd, people will see that post and think I’m crazy for even thinking I could be a writer!” Lost that one too.

I needed a huge dose of “I don’t care” a very long time ago. Because I always cared, always, and I cared too much.

Which is a confusing mix of inner voices, because all the time when I was striving for this goal or that, letting my feelings get tied into who did what, and why not me… the whole time I was battling whether or not any of it was even the path for me. Mental punishment for both trying and for not trying hard enough.

Now I get to sick back and laugh at it all. And it feels good. I don’t have to care anymore. I can just enjoy putting words out into the interwebs… or not.

Granted, quitting something before you even really step out and try it on, probably isn’t the best “Go me” moment. Because when you get down to it, blogging and writing, are a whole heap of sameness, yet couldn’t be further apart. There’s such safety hiding behind little blurbs of thoughts, but writing, as in sending your works out to someone specifically, waiting for them, hoping they choose you… yeah.

Maybe one day I won’t be able to hold back those little voices in my head who want to walk down the aisle of a bookstore and see my name sitting on the shelf. But for now, I’m happy to be free from them.

When I sat down to write out my annual 101 things in 365 days list (posted on my other blog) somehow my fingers cranked out, “Tackle another NaBloPoMo”. I obviously wasn’t thinking, and I’m sure I was just trying to fill in spaces on the list, and probably, just probably I was suffering through another moment of insanity fueled by 70* weather surrounded by snowy days.

I don’t have time for this. Every free minute I have should be filled with knitting, and crocheting, and making soaps and such. Because momma needs a new car that doesn’t die every time it rains.

And too, I have a shiny new blog for the business to work on, and I need to be promoting that, and being all business like, and a garden, and animals, and a kitchen remodel that’s been halfway done for months now…

Let’s not forget the whole, I know better than to do NaBloPoMo in February, I should pick a short month, and I should definitely plan ahead, with scheduled ideas, with some kind of plan…

But. It. Is. On. That. Damn. List.

And I want to slay that list this year. And why not get to it right now.

And since I gave up on any sort of actual writing, aren’t I not free to write whole blog post about nothing?!

Insanity. It’s what this friggen cold weather peppered with tornadoes does to me.

It’s been busy around here for sure. Between family drama, sickness and injuries, the loss of favorite pets, starting a new business, and so on and so on… it’s hard to prioritize blogging. And even harder to follow-up on my friends’ latest writings.

And then, then there is the confession.

I think, I gave up.

Or maybe it is that I am still giving up, or maybe I’m getting ready to give up, and that’s why I feel compelled to write about it. Just one last time. Not that I’m looking for someone to magically pull me back into that other realm, because the time still isn’t there… but just to keep on with the honesty I prefer to keep in here.

So I don’t know what happened. There was some slippery slope, or too many battle wounds… or something. I was like the little train that could, puffing along, thinking I was on track, beating back the negativity… and then… Then the track was cracked by a lack of progress. I couldn’t meet my own goals to save my life. Then the repairable track met the tornado of a pretty bad critique. Then the shambles that were left met another bad critique storm, and then another.

Oh I tried to stay strong and grab onto the sides and pull myself back up. But it just all felt like there was nothing there to grab a hold of. There was no concrete success to put a foot on, there were no met goals to reach for. All that seemed to be there were countless hours wasted, eaten alive by my own self doubt.

What did 50+ followers mean to the stack of bills? Nada. What did one featured post mean to the family at dinner time? Nothing. What did hours of imagining factious plots do for the betterment of anything? Not much. And maybe that’s all my fault. Maybe I just never had the dedication. Maybe I didn’t work hard enough, or want it bad enough. Either way I couldn’t/can’t produce enough evidence to continue down that path.

Yes, yes, I know, whoa, holy heaps of negativity. Unusual for me to do here.

And my bitterness isn’t towards anyone. I don’t want those who have potential to be turned off by what I’m sharing. This is only in my case, all though I’m sure I’m not alone.

I asked once, what your final straw would be, where you would actually turn your back on a dream. And I guess I had found my final line. When your confidence breaks so far that you can no longer drag yourself down that path. When you actually smirk, and twist a compliment, and you get upset. When, for the most part, the words just stop flowing. When you just can’t.

In closing, I thank all of you for all of your support. I thank you for everything you have done for me, and with me. I’ll still be floating around this interwebs world. I’ll still be randomly posting here when the mood strikes. I’ll try to one day get back to visiting your blogs. This isn’t meant to be a big old begging for compliments, or anything of the like. Like I said, I believe in being as honest as possible here, and this is real life folks, unedited, and with a pot of coffee, or two.

I need to have at hand one of those wise old women who can come up with a crazy theory as to why things happen.

You know the kind who say when your hip hurts on a Tuesday on the fourth week of the month it means it’s time to plant the broccoli? That kind, I need one. Maybe she would tell me that when a billy-goat shows up on your lawn on a Monday that maybe you shouldn’t dive into rehabbing your kitchen. Or that maybe I should look into Goat Milk Recipes…

Or maybe that I shouldn’t joke around about wanting a cow, a horse and a puppy for my birthday… because with my luck I’ll end up with another animal to take care of. *peeks out window to make sure said billy-goat has not come back*

She’d probably yell at me for being so flip floppy, and not knowing what direction to turn in almost everything I do. Because being so flip floppy almost always leads to stray billy’s in your yard.

Perhaps she’d shame me for wasting talents lately, or applaud me on taking a different path. She might tell me it’s about time I didn’t waste so many moments in front of a tiny screen… or she might scream that I’ve been wasting a precious opportunity…

And then she’d bake me some awful, old world recipe cake, and she’d wrap up a roll of pennies for me, all heads up. And she’d sing happy birthday to me, in an aged cracky voice, and remind me, that no matter what, I’ll find that right path, despite all odds.

At the end of her song she’d wrap up by yelling at me about how my health will suffer from eating too much cake and remind me to heed the billy goat’s warning…

I need one of them old women. And I need that stray billy-goat to not come back.

Shhhhhhhussshhh! I don’t mean ever or at all… I mean right now. I don’t have it.

I mean I’ve been trying to accept a wonderful award passed on by two special people to me for DAYS, 4 of them to be exact… and I can’t do it. I’ve deleted more copies of drafts than cups of coffee that I’ve consumed. (That’s a whole lot) I just can’t do it.

Why you ask… I dunno. Maybe it’s the minions who refuse to stop trying to hold wrestling matches on my lap, maybe it’s my brain who can’t stop thinking of remodeling my kitchen (yes it IS THAT BAD), maybe it is because of a non-ending drought, maybe it’s because of the TMJ AGAIN, or maybe because I just don’t feel it… maybe.

Just please don’t tell me that I have moved on from this blogging/writing/journaling part of my life…

Something is just not meshing….

Paths and needs are crossing, dead ending, turning back and becoming unstable.

Is it an end… or a beginning?

And that’s where the post ended last Wednesday night. I have not physically been able to make it back to my computer since then. I’m on pain meds and muscle relaxers, and antibiotics (just in case) and can’t move my head to save my life. In reality I should probably be in the hospital, and I should probably be having surgery on my face… but in real reality, we can’t afford it. And we’re praying this will subside until my husband can at least get more vacation time, so someone can take care of me during the whatevers they want to do to me. That’s the pain of being a SAHM, you have very little in the way of backup when your body falls apart.

And the worst part, today is the bebe’s birthday… and even though she won’t remember that my face is swollen twice it’s size, and that there wasn’t a big party, or that mommy couldn’t make a homemade birthday cake… it still sucks.

All of this sucks.

So anyway, that’s where I’ve been. Hopefully everything will ease up soon and I’ll be able to catch up with everyone. Hopefully.

There’s that moment in time when you let someone into your secret private world in your head, the one you’ve devoted every inch of your being too, the first time you share your work, and you wait. You cringe, and try to hide, you fight back the urge to snap the work back away from them, to take all the words back. You want to shrink and hide away, afraid of what they might think.

Afterall, you’re a normal average person. A mother, a cook, a home keeper and animal wrangler… you live an average life. This world on the paper, the world you have created, is far from average. They are going to think that you are all sorts of crazy!

I mean sure, the plot sounds good inside your head, you’d read it, you’d watch it unfold on a big screen… but what if it’s too creative, too crazy, too out there? And then, what if, just what if, not only you have dreamt up a crazy world that makes little sense, what if you wrote it badly?!

Next you find yourself feeling sorry for the poor sap that has to read your pile of craziness because how are they going to face you ever again!? Your gut is turning and wrenching as you wait for them to look up…

Maybe it’s not too late to run away…

Maybe you can blame the many side effects of the cold medicine…

If only you could get off the damn rollercoaster of excitement, embarrassment, and evil inner editors…

And you’re not running because you really do want to know what they think. But then again you wonder if they’d even tell you the truth, and you’re really wishing you could teleport to one of those stupid daytime talk shows that have an ever waiting lie detector sitting in the green room. And then your thoughts float to what the mother of what’s her name who wrote 50 Shades of Grey thought when she read her books. And then you remember someone is reading your words RIGHT NOW…

(I’m thinking that cold medicine and a pot of coffee do not mix well. This cold best go away soon!)

Monday always seems to need a brand spanking new post. And this is problematic for me. I don’t do interwebs on the weekend, not unless I’m expecting an email sending me the next chapter for a book someone is being cruel enough to only let me see bits and pieces at a time! But I digress. Monday morning has me drinking tons of coffee and trying to catch up with everyone and everything… while trying to come up with a post. Because I have to.

Even when I have nothing to say.

And my husband would crack up at the thought of me having nothing to say. Because apparently when you have a cold and spend all weekend in the sun building a 5 million piece swing set, and practicing Pat Benatar songs for the fake band… you WILL loose your voice, but not your sniffles. And just so you know, when one has a bad sneeze inducing cold, one should always put a lid on your adult beverage orrrrr your garage floor will get sticky and you will run out of said beverages.

But like I said, I really have nothing to write. Nada.

Which seems to be a problem lately for me. Because I don’t want to talk about writing or editing. Or of balance and schedules, or things that make you want to invest in Kleenex. And I absolutely detest writing about nothing.

I want to blame the editing and the excitement of ideas floating in my head eating up my blogging thoughts. I also want to blame my right ear that is so clogged it sounds like I have half of my head stuck in a sea shell. I’d also like to blame the teething, non napping, terrible two’s toddler who thinks mommy enjoys scrubbing milk off of the floor.

Yet blaming does not inspire. It’s just the way things are. The brain gets clogged and life gets busy. There are songs to sing and slides to build. And the point of writing is WRITING. Even if it’s not all fancy, even if it won’t win awards or get me a check in the mail. Even if it’s all been written before.

Thirty pages, that’s how much I have left until I’m officially done with my first edits and rewrite. Just thirty pages to go before I get to send off my baby to school and teach it grammar and punctuation.

Unlike my real children I can’t wait to see it go.

I’m tired of coddling, and nurturing it’s whiney little arse, and I’m ready to see it all grown up and in the real world. I love it, I do, and I’m giving it my all… but I’m ready to shove it out of the nest and watch it fly… or crash onto the concrete with a thud and a splatter. Either or, it’s getting close to the time where it must sink or swim. And I think that’s a good thing. Knowing it’s almost ready, knowing it’s time to release it from my hard drive.

And my mind is constantly thinking, “What’s next after this?” And I know the gun hasn’t even sounded and I’m off past the first marker, or just off my rocker. But there’s other ideas and needs and wants, clawing inside their shells. Other paths I want to try… and it’s all hopped up on sugar and caffeine and keeping me up at night. Each potential avenue and thought dancing around waiting for Santa to arrive.

And I want and I want and I want…

So it’s baby steps of torture, and calling myself off of the chase before I dive off of the cliff head first. Big breaths and little steps, but allowing the dreams to slam down one more pixie stick before bed.

And it’s about giving thanks to all of you. With the kind comments and constant encouragement, feeding the monster in my head, the monster that keeps the inner voices at bay, the ones that try to get me to quit it all. Without you all, the casual readers, the faithful commenters, my friends, I’d still be on page one, afraid to peek around the corner.

There’s been a few complaints, eh demands… fine requests to hear a synopsis on the novel I’ve been working on for years. (okay well, it hasn’t been years of work, just years since it’s start date and today) I’m not big on sharing, if you haven’t yet figure that out, because I have nightmares of people running away with my work and publishers turning their noses up at me because too much has been posted online. So this is it, your last glimpse of my novel, until it becomes published in the next fifty years or until I give up and self publish it… either or. And please note, this is just a glimpse for you, this is not in any way a finished product or what I’ll be sending off to agents in my query letters hopefully starting next month.

Here’s your Synopsis for Denali:

Vacations are supposed to be the get-away from it all, stress relief, time of our lives. That’s all that Carly and Scott wanted, a break from their everyday lives. Years of saving and planning led them to a backpacking adventure on the side of Denali in Alaska. Two weeks of hiking, fishing, archery and campfires. Two weeks of escape from everyday lives. But two days into their vacation all they wanted to do was to escape back home, far away from that mountain. As animals started turning up dead, and their campsite ransacked, they knew this wasn’t the vacation they had dreamed of. And then members of their group start to disappear… And when the group leader turns up dead, all blood drained from his body, they knew the great mountain was hiding a secret, a secret that was hunting them down one by one…

And one last snippet:

“I finished up as quick as possible and was struggling to get the gun to stay put in the band of my pants when a loud crash sounded just feet away from me. I bit my tongue to keep my mouth from making a sound, and hunched down against a large tree next to me, carefully gripping onto the pistol.

Two Shadows emerged in the darkness. Human figures, defiantly not wolves. My heart instantly slowed down, people, just people. Maybe even Susan and Gregory! My insides swelled with hope, and my grip relaxed on the gun. But why were they being so quiet, out here in the trees? The camp is just right there, what are they doing here?

Before I could make a sound the skies opened up, and released a threating bolt of lightning. Just enough light, for just long enough to crush every single hope I had of making it back home.

Two male figures stood just 20 feet away from me. I couldn’t make out more than profiles in the darkness, but the way they stood, the way they moved. Every inch of my core told me that these men were not the kind you run to for help. The hairs standing at ends on my body told me these were the type of men you run far, far away from, as fast you can.

I took a slow deep breath, trying to keep my body from trembling. The rain was falling harder, and I was beginning to panic beyond control. I squeezed the handle of the gun as tight as humanly possible, trying to displace the tension from my body to the metal object. The men were still just standing there, not talking, not moving, just… sniffing the air? My mind got lost in the image I was seeing, who sniffs the air? What the hell are they doing? What are they trying to smell out here?”

Enjoy! And don’t say I never gave you anything! lol. Now back to editing. And don’t forget to enter my GIVEAWAY!